Crap, i forgot about last week. Time for another Skepticism Sunday!
Stay on topic:
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This thread is only for comments discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Monero.
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NOT the positive aspects of it.
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Discussion can relate to the technology itself or its economics.
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Talk about community and price is not wanted, but some discussion about it maybe allowed if it relates well.
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Be as respectful and nice as possible. This discussion has potential to be more emotionally charged as it may bring up issues that are extremely upsetting: many people are not only financially but emotionally invested in the ideas and tools around Monero.
How it works:
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Post your concerns about Monero in reply to this thread.
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If you can address these concerns, or add further details to them -- reply to that comment. This will make it easily sort-able.
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Upvote the comments that are the most valid criticisms of it that have few or no real honest solutions/answers to them.
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The comment that mentions the biggest problems of Monero should have the most karma.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.
Monero will never succeed. Monero only serves as an illegal tool to facilitate crime online until it will be regulated by our governments (hopefully this happens soon).
I will provide FOUR irrefutable arguments against Monero below.
Monero is supposed to be a cryptocurrency. As they say in the community, "Monero means money". However, Monero does not even satisfy the criteria of money. Money is defined with the following properties: medium of exchange (widely accepted), unit of account (measure of trade for goods and services), and store of value (self-explanatory). Monero fails to be a medium of exchange that is widely accepted, except for crime and extremely niche cases that will eventually be regulated to oblivion. Neither is Monero a store of value. As proved by past price history, its extreme volatility and reliance on the price movements of BTC/fraudulent cryptocurrencies means that when they eventually fall, Monero will follow. No one on this planet would save or transact in a currency with extreme volatility that could mean losing half the fiat value of your money over night.
Monero has a tainted reputation. Governments are trying their best to delist Monero from CEXes to reduce its usage - for a good reason! Chain analysis companies have proved that almost all of Monero's usage is crime-related darknet activity. Ransomware, drugs, CP, and all the worse things you can imagine are used strictly with Monero in mind.
A common counterargument to Monero being used mostly for crime by their many fanboys is: muh banks and muh fiat currency has crime usage too
Indeed, the US dollar is used in criminal activities due to its status as a global reserve currency. Unlike Monero, the USD serves as a medium of exchange, a fundamental property of money. The prevalence of crime associated with the USD is not a reflection of inherent evil within the currency itself, but rather a reflection of human behavior. In contrast, Monero is designed with a primary focus on privacy and anonymity, making it attractive for illicit activities. The majority of its usage is related to such activities, with only niche cases that the community often highlights as an exception.
Let us assume that Monero is not built for crime and used for good intentions. Let us assume cryptocurrency is not a ponzi and Monero will actually be used worldwide. Even in this best case, Monero can't even serve as a global currency with serious use! It uses old blockchain architecture that only allows one block every 2 minutes with limited transactions that can barely handle the transaction throughput of Visa or Paypal. Adding on, Monero is confusing for average people to use. You have to sync the blockchain worth hundreds of gigabytes, which is continuing to grow infinitely, to run your own node. In the future, normal people won't even be able to run any node as the size of the Monero blockchain grows extremely large. It will rely on data centers and centralized entities like Bitcoin making the network vulnerable to attacks. Also, unlike Bitcoin or other transparent blockchains, you have to scan the entire history of Monero that can take hours if you have unluckily stored your money in it long ago. Imagine waiting hours at the cashier register waiting for the blockchain to sync so it can register that $5 of Monero that you stored years ago!
Monero is centralized, as development and the community-funded initiatives (known as CCS in the Monero community), are vetted by a small group of people who have a complete say in what will or will not be allowed to be hard-forked. If Monero ever gets big, it will face the same problem as Bitcoin, where the community can't decided unilaterally on what they want on the network leading to technical stagnation. If Monero develops a centralized entity, like making a foundation, as seen in Ethereum, to oversee development, this can be solved. But this can never happen because of legal reasons!
When considering these arguments, which are rarely mentioned in this delusional echo chamber, one begins to realize the absurdity of Monero. Apart from its association with illicit activities, the community often justifies its existence by conjuring up a CBDC boogeyman that governments are supposedly planning to release. The persistent fear of a CBDC's arrival has been used for years without any tangible results. I was going to release a documentary on Monero, but I chose not to as Monero is the same as every other scam cryptocurrency, except instead of financial crime, Monero enables all crime.
This is not skepticism. This is bullshit, plain and simple. Unless you have behind-the-scenes knowledge that the public does not currently possess, there is zero evidence to suggest that almost all of Monero's usage is crime-related. As of 2024, the IRS has still not paid out their final bounty for a tool to trace Monero transactions, and almost all spokespeople for chain analysis companies (some of which I have personally talked to) say that Monero is effectively untraceable in the majority of cases. As such, I don't see how you conjured up this statement unless you have a specific distaste for Monero and no sense of obligation to speak truthfully. Please point to a source where chain analysis "proved" the majority of Monero usage is illicit. Even if we take at face value that Monero is the currency of choice for many criminal rings, there still needs to be evidence of actual numbers related to the criminal volume versus total Monero volume. Some organizations have tried scoping this out, but I honestly know of no source that pins it anywhere near that high. Most place it around the same as USD and BTC at ~1-3%, with some going as high 15%. There is a ton of variability in those figures, and all acknowledge that comprehensive data collection is inherently impossible (criminals don't report their transactions, and good financial data is hard to collect even for honest participants), and not a single one has ever claimed to "prove" any of those figures.
Monero usage from criminals can be tracked from CEXes, swaps, and cross-chain bridges. It can also be tracked by vulnerabilities mentioned in the "Breaking Monero" series. You are being dishonest by ignoring the main use of Monero among criminals. Your community is also vocal about Monero replacing Bitcoin on darknets and view it as positive.
Sources: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/csam-cryptocurrency-monero-instant-exchangers-2024 https://www.ft.com/content/13fb66ed-b4e2-4f5f-926a-7d34dc40d8b6 https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-crypto-money-laundering
None of those linked articles support the claim that "almost all of Monero’s usage is crime-related".
Criminals will use the best tool of their choice as USD. Monero and cash works as intended regardless if it's used by criminals or not. Privacy is a right.
The "sources" are extremely sus. Most CEXes have delisted Monero and no-KYC exchanges by definition don't have KYC. The addresses are not stored on the blockchain. If an address is known to be CSAM, it would be blocked off so no transactions would have been made and because of the previous point, you can't go back in the blockchain to find past offenders. The CSAM site likely has other non-CSAM porn so many actual purchases would be legal so usage on honeypot exchanges would not mean much. Reading between the lines, the article is basically coming up with its statistics via inference. (1) Most BTC blockchain activity is speculation, (2) CSAM makes up a significant percentage of BTC actual usage, (3) Monero's popularity is growing, (4) Criminals prefer privacy, (5) therefore Monero's growth is mostly from CSAM. The main counterpoint to this is Monero's increase use in coin cards, VPN and other privacy tool/services purchases, Shopinbit, etc where Monero's use exceeds that of BTC and lightning. So (1) does not apply to Monero, and it's likely (2) if it were ever true is increasingly not the case so (5) is absolutely false.